Retail Recession? or Riding the Wave - 5 Strategies for trading now

Let's be honest, the retail industry has tough times ahead. Following the events over the past 2 weeks and the changing economy over the coming months there is still an opportunity to build more loyal customers. Here are some recommendations on how...

1. Be productive...

During a time of uncertainty it’s important to be as productive as possible with your resources. Our recommendations:

Take a measured and targeted approach to your business initiatives. Don’t rush into making decisions about promotional activity and slashing prices before doing your due diligence. Having one well executed strategy will far outweigh the resources required to implement ten poorly executed ones.

Don’t rush into making decisions about promotional activity and slashing prices before doing your due diligence.

Having one well executed strategy will far outweigh the resources required to implement ten poorly executed ones.

Be clear about what your initiative is going to deliver and track your progress every step of the way. Be prepared to change your approach daily with new information, but always set yourself a target so you know what success looks like.

Expect to fail. Your first attempt is unlikely to be your best but stay focused and be persistent in your attempts.

Be prepared to change your approach daily with new information, but always set yourself a target so you know what success looks like.

2. Focus on your customers…

When sales start to slow and margins are squeezed retailers tend to look inwards and cut costs without thinking about the impact to the customer.

Here’s a couple of ideas on how to stay customer focused:

Give your customers a personalised experience. Think about increasing your customer engagement through more communication. Use chatbots, email and text messages to stay in touch. Most people are on a slowdown with working remotely so they have time to consider communications more.

Analyse your customers in detail as they will be behaving differently across geo-locations. Ask yourself: Which markets are impacted more than others?

Analyse your customers in detail as they will be behaving differently across geo-locations. Ask yourself: Which markets are impacted more than others? And how can you serve some better than others?

Do some competitor analysis and market research. This will help you stay on top of how your competitors are reacting to the changes in the market.

Are your customers shopping at other stores? Which ones and why?

What products do they have that you don’t? It can be as simple as summarising your competitors' online product offering by category.

Have your competitors already spotted an opportunity that you haven’t?

3. Use data to your advantage…

The answers will be in the data and be prepared to dig a little deeper.

Find product insights across categories and brands which will help support stability in sales and profit. There might be parts of the business that are experiencing growth. Ask yourselves the following questions:

Which products in your range are showing high productivity?

Which products in your range are showing high productivity?

What changes can you make to future stock commitments based on your data? Sometimes it can seem less intuitive but customers are spending in higher price points to obtain more quality products that last longer. Longevity is often a focus in an environment like this to assess your product range with this in mind.

Monitor trends daily to keep up to date on shifts in purchasing habits. The market is rapidly changing so you must take the same approach and assess it more vigilantly.

4. Online should be the focus…

Take an online first approach. Customers will be spending a lot of time on the net so think of clever initiatives to help them convert. Here’s a couple of pointers:

Focus on your site merchandising, you have the time and it really impacts conversion rate, boost your best-sellers to the top of your catalog pages if you have a good stock investment in them and they still have size availability

Throughout this time, the performance of different marketing channels will change.

Get granular, analyse your click-through, conversions and impressions at a product level to ensure to take advantage of any and all opportunities.

Throughout this time, the performance of different marketing channels will change. Ensure you are on top of the changes to optimise your return on spend.

Throughout this time, the performance of different marketing channels will change.

Find a way to surprise and delight your customers as opposed to simply offering discounts, be creative!

5. Keep calm and Carry On

As a retailer we’re also on a curve, it's a flat one now and on a decline, but this is the time to adjust and be well prepared for when the market shifts back into gear.

Those that plan and prepare for the inevitable turn will be well placed to capitalise on the positive change in consumer behaviour and get in front of the pack.

We are busy brainstorming ideas to help you trade during this challenging time and will share these with you over the coming weeks.

Coming up next:

- understanding geo-locational preferences

- price elasticity

- save on sizing

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Style Arcade is a software company servicing fashion companies to make the right product decisions through analytics and range planning.